The ultimate in cool is not being afraid to be uncool sometimes.

The New York City metropolitan area is once again asserting it’s rightful dominance in the all-important category of All-Around Corruption and Official Government Thuggery. This standing has been in some doubt of late, with our own tawdry little State Capital in the semi-city of Albany grabbing headline after headline describing the moral and ethical cesspool that passes for the New York State Legislature. Indeed, State Governments in Illinois and as far away as California and Alaska have been making great strides in the Corruption Sweepstakes, earnestly selling their influence to the highest bidder and shamelessly selling out their constituents, to say nothing of the Federal Government for the 8 years prior to 2009 being the most criminally corrupt Administration in American history.

The Big Apple was slipping badly and Americans were scratching their heads and asking the question: “What’s up with that?” Then just last year, Wall Street came to our rescue when it, as the Control Center For All The Money In The World, collapsed in an orgy of greed, incompetence and naked larceny on the grandest possible scale, plunging the entire world into economic chaos. We were back, people, back with a vengeance! But many of us wondered out loud: was it enough? After all, the details of the Worldwide Money Flush revealed prominent coconspirator culprits hailing from all over the planet, with Wall Street merely having the most March Of Slime Poster Boys per capita. We needed a real live home grown rootin’-tootin’ scourge of a scandal that would repel everybody and let the whole world know Who’s Your Abusive Daddy!

Well, it happened last week, and involved not only two of New York City’s boroughs, Brooklyn and the Bronx, but several mayors of some of New York’s Vassal States across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Money laundering! Bribes! Influence peddling! Legislators! Mayors! Appointed Public Officals! Health Inspectors! Synagogues as fronts for cleaning dirty money! Thieves and goons of every racial, religious, sexual and political persuasion, a Rainbow Coalition of slime! Take that, Chicago! Eat our dust, Louisiana! And best (worst) of all – rabbis involved in black market human organ sales, with pistols involved, for God’s sake! (Okay, bad choice of word there.)

New York has shown the world that we can do it bigger, better and badder than anywhere else. Bernie Madoff, biggest thief ever at $165 billion? A New Yorker, thank you very much! Rabbi Ishak Rosenbaum, the monster who bought poor people’s internal organs for $10,000 and then resold them for 15 times that amount on the human organ black market (How evil is that?), often enforcing the organ removal surgery at gunpoint? That’s right folks, a New Yorker! And guess what, who do you think made charitable donations of stolen money to Rabbi Rosenbaum’s phony charity? That’s right, our very own Bernie Madoff. You can’t make this stuff up, people! And as this far-flung scandal and FBI investigation unfolds it just gets better (worse) and better (worse)! Keith Olberman’s head is spinning trying to pick his TV show’s daily Worst Person In The World!

There are just so many to choose from, and now The New York Daily News has expanded the scope of the scandal into a stomach-wrenching expose of New York City hospitals and their life threatening incompetence, filth, indifference and corruption. Damn, this is good (appallingly horrible)! For those of us wondering exactly what it would take to make all the disgraced CEOs of our major banks and corporations look not all that bad, well, here it is. The human organ ring is downright Satanic, and being run by an alleged Man of God, it makes you wonder what’s worse than Satan. Wow, these people are so damned heinous they are beyond human language to describe them! Do we growl and bark at them? Are there any acts or gestures strong enough to register our complete revulsion?

Doubtful. Even putrid, runny defecation or foul, oozing, infected pustules are mild images compared to preying upon society’s most vulnerable and desperate. Not only that, but costing the lives of countless other such souls who don’t have 150 grand for a contraband kidney by completely corrupting the organ donor system. You’re serial killer material at that point, or maybe worse, since serial killers don’t grow wealthy with all that time-consuming stalking and killing, it’s just a hobby. And since the head of the gang is a rabbi, he ups the ante on sleaze even more by providing anti-Semites and conspiracy wackos plenty of material for their moronic evil-Jews-run-the-world tirades. Just what the world needs, more hate, eh? How’s that for splashing the slime around? The guy’s a virtuoso!

And so Gotham reclaims our mantle. After years of falling crime rates, improved quality of life and boring revitalization of so many formerly troubled neighborhoods, people were talking. There were whispers everywhere that New York City had lost its edge. Well, last week’s arrests put all that gossip to rest and put the lie to the nasty rumors that we were getting soft. Hah! Our public officials are once again front and center on the front page of the newspapers, doing their perp walk and denying the charges. Why, Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall would be proud as can be! It’s like old times again in New York. To which we can only say: How much is that kidney in the window?

Ice cream is not a recognized food group, yet another gaping hole in American nutritional science. The reality is that it is by far the very best of the food groups, in spite of any official killjoys who insist otherwise. In a nation where the Surgeon General is neither a surgeon nor a general, what can you expect?

The New York Yankees, Major League Baseball’s most successful team and the most famous sports team in the world, are having themselves a dandy of a season. They’ve been an excellent team again since 1996 when they went on an old time Yankee-style tear of winning 4 World Championships in 5 seasons, an incredibly difficult feat in these days of 3 rounds of playoff games. No other baseball team has been able to accomplish anything remotely similar since the advent of the playoff system to determine which teams advance to the World Series. A team has to remain focused and hot for two grueling elimination rounds, staving off other excellent teams that get suddenly hot, and then maintain that intensity in the World Series. And with management having just invested in a brand new Yankee Stadium and the three top free agents on the market over the winter, the pressure was on to win it all this year.

It has been almost 9 years now since they last won a World Series. Oh, they reached there twice, only to lose to the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001 and the Florida Marlins in 2003. Since then, they’ve been eliminated in the second round in 2004 and in the first round of the playoffs 3 straight times. The last time this happened it cost Manager Joe Torre his job after 12 stellar seasons, an incredibly long run for the George Steinbrenner-owned Yankees. He was replaced by Joe Gerardi, a former Yankee catcher who was around for the beginning of the late 90’s dynasty before giving way to current long-time All Star catcher Jorge Posada and moving on to coaching and managing. The Yanks didn’t even make the playoffs in 2008 for the first time since 1995. The vultures circled and the Yankees were pronounced over the hill and a team in transition heading nowhere fast.

Gone were old warriors Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neill and Scott Brosius. Nowhere to be seen were tenacious bulldog pitchers like Davids Cone and Wells, Andy Pettitte and El Duque, Orlando Hernandez, all of whom ratcheted up their considerable skill level come October. Sure, Pettitte was back after a three year exile in Houston, but last year he faded in the stretch, going 14-14 for the first non-winning record of his career. There has been a lot of talk about Alex Rodriguez being a distraction and there being no team chemistry with all the new free agent millionaires the Yankee brought in over the winter.

Mostly there was a lot of chatter about the last three holdovers from 1996 getting a little long in the tooth and losing their edge. These would be team captain Derek Jeter, the face of baseball and a fantastic player who knows a hundred ways to win a baseball game, Posada, who had off-season shoulder surgery and started the season late, and the great Mariano Rivera, the best closing pitcher ever to play the game. Incredible as it may seem, these boys of summer are now 35, 37 and 39, respectively, an age that usually signals if not the end of a baseball career, the twilight years at best. While all three men are superb athletes with great work habits, no one cheats Father Time forever. The feeling was that these three hearts and souls of this Yankee team would falter and drag the team down.

The team started the season spottily too, with an up and down April and May while their arch rivals the Boston Red Sox looked to be the better team, beating the Yankees in every meeting. Jeter was in better health than in recent years when he played through a series of injuries, never admitting they were a hindrance. His return to top form helped keep the Yanks in the race while they struggled. Posada was rehabbing his shoulder and Mariano blew a couple of saves and started to look decidedly human. One of their best starting pitchers, Chien Ming Wang, succumbed to a series of injuries that knocked him out for half the season last year and likely this season too.

The two new free agent pitchers, C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, were not in the dominant groove expected of them. Pettitte has been solid, but he is 37 and getting by on smarts and experience. Joba Chamberlain, their Ace Apparent, experienced a lot of growing pains as a starter after shining as the set-up man for Rivera last year. Alex Rodriguez, possibly baseball’s most talented player, also started the season late, recovering from surgery on his hip. Hideki Matsui has been limited to the Designated Hitter role due to surgery on his knee. 35 year-old Johnny Damon had to take over Matsui’s left field job and decent but not spectacular Nick Swisher was hired to play right field. Center Field, long the glory position in Yankee Stadium was up for grabs in spring training and shared by two young players who had yet to prove themselves, Brett Gardner and Melky Cabrera. All in all, many thought this was a team in transition and would again miss the playoffs.

On the plus side, new first baseman Mark Texiera has been a marvel, hitting in the clutch, fielding his position well and piling up home runs. Second baseman Robinson Cano has also been terrific, bouncing back from a sub-par performance last year. Outfielder Brett Gardner has added a new dimension to their base running game with his blinding speed and daring and Melky Cabrera is becoming a clutch performer and has a great arm in the outfield, saving many a run as opposing base runners think better of taking the extra base. Swisher has been a welcome addition too, a loose-goose country hardball player enjoying a career year.

Matsui’s been in a sweet hitting groove, knocking a walk-off homer the other day, and Damon’s bat is still as lethal as ever in his new #2 spot in the order. The utility players have been ably filling in for the injured and coming off the bench with solid contributions. The bullpen has solidified with the dominant success of Phil Hughes in Chamberlain’s former role as set up man, with Phil Coke and Alfredo Aceves shining too. Their catcher-of-the-future Francisco Cervelli opened a lot of eyes with his potent bat and his ability to call games at the major league level before he was sent back to the minors to make way for Posada, a move that some said was a mistake since they felt Posada would be unreliable behind the plate after his surgery.

Then came the hot weather and a team that was coming together as a unit starting to feel their oats. Jorge Posada is doing the lion’s share of the catching and his hitting has been outstanding, his home run power still a threat. Mariano has been as great as ever as a closer, those couple of blown saves early on seemingly a fluke. After struggling when he returned, Alex Rogriguez is again striking fear into the hearts of opposing teams when he comes to bat and fielding his position flawlessly. And Derek Jeter, moved into the unfamiliar lead-off role in the lineup this year, has shown the world he is still Derek Jeter both at bat and on the field. After scoring the tying run in the All Star Game his team would win, Jeter’s Yankees started a 10 game home stand and have won 8 of 9 so far, taking over first place from Boston.

There were a magic few games recently when it looked like the late 90s with Posada and Jeter getting clutch hits late in the game and making spectacular plays to save runs and then Mariano coming in to close out the games with skinny one run leads 3 nights in a row with that eerie calm and indomitable confidence. These three have set the tone for their team, and everyone else is doing their best to live up to their quiet professionalism, competitive fire and killer instinct. The starting pitching has been strong, the bullpen stronger and the fielding and hitting better than any other team. And the old guard is there leading not only by the example of their stellar play, but by the sheer force of their personalities.

Rivera and Posada are serious hardworking family men, bright students of the game they have spent their adult lives learning and eager teachers to the younger players and even the veterans new to the Yankees. Derek Jeter, one of the most famous athletes in the country, handsome and single, seems to be an impossible person: one who has not succumbed to the debilitating temptations of the big city and become a vacuous playboy frittering away his talents on the nightlife and growing an ego the size of New York like so many before him. He remains the polite, clean living and driven young man he was in 1996, still calling his former manager Mr. Torre and keeping his private life private in the biggest fishbowl in a fishbowl age.

Even people who hate the Yankees, and there are no shortage of those, never have a bad word to say about The Captain. When he signed a 10 year contract paying him $18 million per season in 2001, he never slacked off in his pursuit of excellence and continues to hone his skills and stay in game shape all year round. With his own money he started the Turn Two Foundation, a charity dedicated to keep young boys from getting involved with drugs and alcohol that runs programs and activities designed to help the youngsters get the most out of their lives. He has never been involved in a scandal of any sort and there have never been any suspicions of him using steroids or abusing another person.

The same can be said of Rivera and Posada, and there has seldom been three such big stars on one team who acted less like stars. They know theirs is a team sport with the success of the team relying on the preparation, dedication and professionalism of every member of the team, and they have never let down their teammates or fans in this respect. This is a team to savor and watch closely because who knows how much longer these three amigos will continue to put their stamp of modest intensity on their team, playing hard every inning of every game, getting the most out of their gifts and raising the bar in the clutch.

They’ve been together a dozen years and have come to define the Yankees. This has become a very interesting season indeed and we can all look forward to baseball being played at its highest possible level at Yankee Stadium and we have these 3 old dogs who everyone thought had left their best days behind them to thank. With their old bulldog of a pitcher buddy, the prodigal son Andy Pettitte rejoining them, along with a superb supporting cast, this can wind up being a very special season indeed. The excitement is palpable and even the fair weather Yankee fans and the doubters are sitting up and taking notice. World Series win #27, anybody?  Play ball!

Memory is like visual perspective. The farther away something gets, the smaller it seems to be, no matter how huge it was up close.

Bad enough that half this world lives in the Space Age while the other half resides somewhere between 2 and 8 centuries ago, but there’s tiny groups of so-called isolated tribes who haven’t even reached the Bronze Age yet and scientists and social engineers want to keep them exactly where they are. Why? Their sacred life style will be lost forever? Good! Why the hell should these people pay for their former geographic isolation from the rest of humanity forever? Just so some asshole with a few letters behind his name can test them like lab rats and use them to advance his half-assed social theories? Screw that. Some of these patronizing slobs have in effect “adopted” these tribes and do all they can to keep them living in primitive conditions, the rat pricks.

When you adopt a child, if you kept the kid in primitive conditions it wouldn’t be long before your ass would be slapped in jail for child abuse, and rightfully so. The isolated tribes have children, sure, but most of them are human adults with the exact same intellectual capacity as anyone anywhere. Their children have the exact same capacity for learning and adapting to new realities as children anywhere else on the planet. Should they be condemned to live a prehistoric existence forever just so some joker can publish scientific papers that only other dopes like them read? And guess what? They sure as hell are not isolated anymore or the rest of us wouldn’t know so much about them. Explain that one away, Dr. Livingston. If we are reading about them in The New York Times, it’s pretty damned official; they’re famous. Isolated, shmisolated.

So, that bubble is burst and these people are well aware of us too. Do they ever wonder why the rest of the world hasn’t invited them to the dance? There’s giant bulldozers dismantling their damned world all around them, and people with satellite phones and laptop computers flying into their neighborhood in aircraft all the time photographing them, filming them, interviewing them, treating them with modern miraculous medicines when need be and generally letting them know that we have all sorts of really cool stuff centuries more advanced than anything they have. That would be like a technologically advanced race from another planet visiting us, and telling us: “Sure we can cure cancer, end hunger in your world and provide you with an unlimited energy source using house flies but you can’t have any of that because we want to study you in all your backward squalor.”

That would kind of grate on your nerves, no? Maybe they’d explain that they don’t want to despoil our unique, naive and quaint culture with all this complex progress and ease of living. So they’d just sort of hang around, interviewing us and documenting our existence while they play with their miraculous inventions and fly around in their space ships and levitate sky scrapers with their secret decoder rings and never share any of this with us even though they aren’t any smarter than us and then have the nerve to call themselves our friends and protectors. And we’d still be dying in droves from cancer and starvation and poisoning our planet with CO2 emissions knowing that these guys can help us out here in a flash. It wouldn’t be long before we started kicking serious alien ass and telling them to go the fuck home and leave us alone already and we’ll figure our lives out ourselves, thank you, you arrogant alien blowhard fucking geeks!

You’ve got to figure there’s a lot those thoughts swimming around in these not-so-isolated-anymore people’s heads, stuff like: “I’m living in a sweltering straw fucking hut making arrow tips from obsidian so I can chase down a giant irritable wild boar barefoot in the pouring rain through thick jungle and be lucky not to get a huge tusk hole gouged in my abdomen and I’m carrying water in a mud and straw bucket and my 48 year-old father is dying of old age and this asshole cruises in here in an air-conditioned speedboat eating microwaved food, carrying all sorts of automatic firearms that he doesn’t even hunt with, listening to Wilco songs while talking to his friends on the other side of the planet on his computer in real time and wearing glasses that cure failing eyesight with ease and he’s telling me I’m the lucky one? I’ve got a nice litle poison dart with his goddamned name on it, the fat-ass piece of shit!”

Who wouldn’t think these thoughts under the same circumstances? No one’s saying eradicate their culture or language or religion or their cultural wisdom, just maybe give them some amenities, a chance to join the party and boogie a little bit, maybe give their kids a shot to not have to drop dead of old age at 48, if they can avoid the panthers and the boar tusks, that is. An invitation, that’s all. Hell, the Dalai Lama has a friggin’ website and flies around the world first class and he’s still a Buddhist monk, believing all the same stuff that Buddhist monks have believed for long centuries, so let’s not get all weepy about the modern world spoiling ancient belief systems and cultures.

Who hasn’t seen an Indian woman in a traditional sari and head dot texting and gabbing away on the latest iPhone, or a bearded and black-garbed Chassidic Jew who truly believes that the world is only 6,000 years old (!) whipping out the old laptop to find the best prices for religious relics exactly like those described in the Book of Leviticus? These people have kept pace just fine with the modern world and haven’t had their cultures, languages or ancient beliefs eradicated. Why keep these Amazon tribes as humanity’s pets? Because we can? That’s pretty shitty of us.

At least give the poor suckers a choice. If we don’t, look for a rash of scientists’ bodies floating down the Amazon River with a whole bunch of obsidian-tipped poison darts perforating their plump heinies. Then maybe the next set of scholars to visit them just might rethink their roles as human zookeepers and try to truly help our long lost brothers and sisters join in our shared human journey. Odds are they’ll have plenty to teach us too; their music, their stories, their jokes, their wisdom, their vast knowledge of the ecology of the deep rain forests, their thought processes and the unique opportunity to learn from fresh sets of eyes assessing the world we have built. One of them just might cure cancer one of these days, invent a spaceship that can reach the stars or explain how men can live in peace. But we’ll never know that if we insist on keeping them as pets. Set them free and go study aardvarks or something.

If you don’t understand something, it’s no calamity and no, you’re not a dummy. Even Einstein was lousy speller, and he was a pretty sharp guy. We all have our strengths and our Achilles heels. Ask questions.

What makes you happy? Plenty of things, no doubt. We all have our preferences, whether it’s baseball, gardening, music, religion, stamp collecting, cars, painting, reading, swimming or any of a bazillion things that hold people’s interest to the point where they capture our affection, our out and out love. Then there’s the things that everybody loves; making love, eating good food, sunny days, our families, our country and the people who we connect with in a special way who are our dear friends. These things make us all happy campers. We love them. They bring us joy.

Joy is a seldom-used word, which is sort of odd when you think of what a wonderful thing it is to experience joy. There’s not even all that many expressions describing the sensation either; boundless joy, unbridled joy, pride and joy, all-encompassing joy (pretty lame, that one) and that’s about it. You’d think joy would be on the tip of our tongues all the time and we’d have a thousand ways to describe it, like the Eskimos with their eighty words for snow. Or maybe it’s just one of those rare feelings not easily put into words (That’s where I come in handy.). Sure, this can be a mean old world sometimes, and all that doom and gloom stuff, but this is not about that side of the coin. There is no one reading this who has not had their share or more of grief and disappointment and need no reminders of that. Let’s talk joy!

We start out life filled with awe and wonder and having an infinite capacity to experience joy. Sticking our toes in our mouth, seeing our first butterfly, taking our first rickety steps, these were pretty joyful things for each of us. Add some vanilla ice cream and a baby is in Nirvana, ecstatic beyond comprehension. Then there were those times in childhood when a complete euphoric joy assaulted every one of our senses for no reason at all, that giddy flight of our minds and bodies that informed our little selves how very wonderful it is be alive. Those moments connected us with the incredible power of this vibrant life and made us realize that we are an important part of this big old ball of wax. As grownups we are fortunate to occasionally have this feeling revisit us out of nowhere, swooping down on our serious, earnest selves and transporting us to Joyville. What a gas!

When and why that happens is as inexplicable as it is surprising. Then again, why question it? Joy is not something to be analyzed or dissected, it is a priceless gift to be felt deeply and savored. Maybe it was that beam of sunlight that pushed its way through steel-gray mountains of clouds and shined right in your face for a couple of seconds? After that the rainy day wasn’t so bad after all, was it? It could have been the swaying hips of that lovely young thing who just sashayed by. Might be snippet of an old song that brings back a golden torrent of sweet memories. Who knows what makes us joyful? And who cares? Grab it with both hands and hang on for dear life.

And if you pay attention you can’t help but notice that there’s a lot of joy around us. Children are the most obvious suspects of course. Now put children with other children and throw in a couple of big, happy, sloppy dogs that the kids can’t quite control? Well, that’s completely off the measurable joy charts, not only for the peewees and the dogs but for anyone lucky enough to witness their aimless, chaotic play. Makes no sense whatsoever and that’s half the joy right there. Stop and smell those roses whenever the opportunity presents itself. You won’t soon forget the experience and you’ll always smile about what you saw.

Everywhere you turn is joy. Next time you’re in an airport with time to kill (like just about every time you’re in an airport) check out the Arrivals Gate. See how people react to long-delayed homecomings, how they rush into each others arms unashamed, weeping and laughing at the same time, absolutely consumed with joy. Watch the little dances of anticipation by people as they examine each face that emerges, waiting for their person, their loved one, and when they spot them in the crowd notice the blissful light in both faces when eyes meet. And when that loved one is a soldier coming back to his or her family from the wars whole and healthy? That is simply sublime. Watch the little child triumphantly climb atop Daddy’s shoulders as they go retrieve the luggage while his wife and parents and siblings cling to him desperately to remind themselves that this is real. If tears don’t come to your eyes and joy for these total strangers doesn’t fill your soul, you are made of stone and to be pitied.

Joy is in your own life too, everywhere you turn, if only you open your heart to receive it. Take nothing and no one for granted and marvel every day at the miracle of the people in your life and at your own life itself. The hell with what you don’t have, that list will always be longer than what you do have no matter how rich you become. Riches bring you only things. People and genuine interests bring you joy. Love and cherish who and what is in your life with every bit of your strength. Do the things you love to do, and do them with a passion. Joy does not visit the lukewarm but is showered upon the passionate. Be fierce in your love, because sometimes people are taken from us too soon and they should always know the power of your shared love and the primal joy it has brought to both of you. Love unexpressed is a tragedy.

Be generous in your spirit and share who you are. Love is one thing that returns tenfold when you give it away with no thought of any reward. Waste no time with those who reject you, there’s plenty more where they came from. Waste none of your precious life either with those who feel that love, joy and passion are unimportant. They’ve got a screw loose and live dry, empty lives. Never be embarrassed by your capacity for giving or receiving love and joy. Men can learn a lot from women in this respect. While being a man is pretty different from being a woman, no definition of manhood should exclude open expressions of love or joy. It’s not manly to be a stone, it’s being a damned stone. Outside of geologists, anybody fascinated by rocks?

The world has plenty of barren rocks laying around already without any of us joining them. We’re humans, a confusing jumble of emotions, intellect, fears, aspirations, desires, needs, wonder, curiosity and dreams. So let’s dream our dreams and laugh our laughs and work our jobs with all we’ve got. Yesterday’s gone and tomorrow might not come so let’s all of us right here and right now love our people madly, do the things we love to do and open our hearts and our minds and our souls to that great other, the joy that we are privileged to be able to receive. That feeling that makes you want to LIVE in capital letters, to do and be and taste and touch! May you give and receive profound joy this day.

Even though neither one is necessary, snacks are more fun than meals and naps feel better than a night’s sleep. It’s the indulgence that feels good.

Is it just me or are there others who don’t remember trusting (or not trusting, for that matter) Walter Cronkite all that much? Wasn’t something that occurred to me all that often. I don’t ever remember any “What would Walter Cronkite do?” moments when making life decisions. While I sure didn’t dislike the man and if I ever gave him any conscious thought at all considered him to be a consummate professional, a reassuring part of the cultural landscape and probably a really nice guy, he wasn’t in my mind my uncle. I had plenty of uncles, even a real Uncle Walter, none of them remotely like him. And as far as him being an “American Icon” or a Great American, did he have any huge talent I don’t know about other than reading news reports on TV?

Maybe some volumes of poetry or something, a great novel or two published under another name, perhaps being a virtuoso on the oboe or a great painter or sculptor or composer or an innovative philosopher? Did he invent stuff? Was he a secret Great Statesman? Or was he just an earnest guy doing do his job well and lucky enough to become rich and famous and smart enough not to make a complete ass of himself in the process like so many of his colleagues do? Is it just me, or is that who Walter Cronkite was? All in all, a damned good legacy, and one I get the feeling he would be just as happy with as the being called “the most trusted man in America.”

Is it just me or does the word “birthers” conjure up images of grimy, illiterate midwives from centuries past with Cockney accents? Awright now, let’s have the menfolk outta the ‘ouse and let me change the straw ticking! All of a sudden the right wing, fresh out of ideas, voted out of power at the national level, unable to explain away their disastrous 8 years in power, is now grasping at the straw of claiming that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and thus ineligible to hold the office of President, an issue long since put to rest in the minds of the sane and undesperate. They even have a name for their movement, Birthers, and a jackass Congressman from California proposing to waste valuable legislative energy in the midst of several pressing national crises on a bill to make it a law for all presidential candidates to produce an original birth certificate (There’s already a Constitutional requirement for this proof.).

Can’t these guys just take a time out and come to grips with the facts of life? Maybe realize that they destroyed a once-thriving Republican Party by driving out all the smart people and that the road back to power is not through acting really crazy?  And just maybe a little reflection might lead them to wonder just what the hell they were thinking when they handed the mantle of leadership to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and (!) Sarah Palin. Come on, right wing people, you’re scaring us now, snap out out of it! Stop with the foaming at the mouth already and beg the calm, smart people to return and help save the 2 party adversarial system. Don’t make us put you on sedatives, ’cause we will.

Is it just me or shouldn’t official corruption be considered more of a crime than a sport? Right now it seems that our state and federal legislatures, our courts and appointed officials of every political persuasion are in a stiff competition to see who can be the most greedy and self-serving son-or-daughter-of-a-bitch in the country. And without naming names that are already splashed all over every media outlet on any given day, there’s a lot of really accomplished thieves out there in officialdom land. And they have the nerve to complain about corrupt cops when they are in effect their bosses and setting such a vile example? Please! Isn’t it time to start sending these clowns to jail for a really long time when they are caught with their hands in the public cookie jar or taking bribes? Ten or fifteen years in a real slammer with real criminals (which is what they are, by the way) and forfeiture of any assets they obtained through their crimes ought to give the rest of them something to think about when temptation strikes.

And the hell with worrying about their sex lives or the state of their marriages, that’s just immature bullshit that has no bearing on anything public, go after the damned thieves. Why should Bernie Madoff get 150 years for ripping off rich people when our corrupt leaders are starting illegal wars for profit, taking bribes from corporations, rigging the system to benefit themselves and stealing from everybody and getting away with it?  While long jail sentences would not completely eliminate corruption, it just might keep the stealing down to a discreet minimum so we can get things done. Is it just me or do we need stiff regulation now more than ever? There’s sure no shortage of rules and regulations (laws) imposed on the average citizen, no? And when we break them we know we risk long incarceration in a decidedly unpleasant penitentiary. Who died and made these people kings, above the law? Wasn’t there a revolution around here in 1776 to eliminate royalty, that whole “all men are created equal” deal and the concept of equal justice before the law? As a wise man once said: “Something smells like fish and it ain’t fish.”